The concept of an "Overworld" or "World Map" (As seen in almost any pre-PS2 era RPG) has quickly gone out of favour in RPGs since the release of the PS2 and perhaps most notably, FFX.

I think FFX was perhaps the first big RPG game to do without a world map(please correct me if I'm wrong). I remember playing it for the first time and I kept thinking "When do I get to the overworld?" and to this day I am disappointed that it never came.

I think I understand the reason for doing it this way. It creates immersion that's much more consistent throughout the game and you don't have jarring graphic style changes when transitioning between the Overworld and a dungeon or town, but from a gameplay perspective I really do miss it. The most notable recent game to have an Overworld is Ni No Kuni. For those that don't know, Ni No Kuni is completely animated and goes for a very anime look. Because of this the transition from town to the Overworld and back again was more or less seamless.

So is graphical style the main cause of this shift in gameplay and do you think that with the much smaller jump in graphics capability of the next-gen consoles, will we see developers focus more on gameplay and stylized graphics than we saw this generation?

i never understood why people had such a stick up their ass when it came over overworld maps. to me, it made the world seem like a real world instead of something smaller than my neighborhood. it gave the sense that there was a lot more to the world and the reason locations are small is because they're just the parts you're interacting while there is still actually a lot more world out there.

I'd argue that with Ni No Kuni that its stylized appearance removes it from photorealism and the expectations that come from it. We aren't necessarily expecting a totally realistic world, so a sudden shift in scale isn't jarring to the imagination. Imagine doing the same thing with a game in the style of, say, The Witcher. The presentation would have to change to become more abstracted; otherwise, the appearance of a gargantuan Geralt stomping through a miniature version of The Continent would seem too absurd.

EDIT: To add onto this, I'd also argue that part of the reason real-time combat has become more popular is because the more photorealistic graphics clash with an abstracted game system. Watching real people take turns hacking at each other makes less sense than watching them hack at each other in real time. The further the visuals move towards representation (i.e. photorealism), the less more obvious the abstracted game mechanics appear, for better and for worse.

Older RPGs had an easier time getting away with a separate overworld not just because of their appearance, but also their mechanics. Role-playing games in general are made up of various abstract systems coming together to form a cohesive experience. In real life, combatants don't stand in a line and take turns thwacking each other, and they don't have neat numerical scores that tell them how strong they are or how close they are to dying. These are mechanics meant to represent a fight; a metaphor for combat, if you will. In this same light, an overworld is an abstracted way of presenting the larger world the main characters exist in. This was initially done out of necessity, and as graphics have improved it has become more common for RPGs to have a totally seamless world for the players to roam through.

But in the same way that abstracted art styles like Ni No Kuni have their appeal, so too do abstracted mechanics. For all of the flash that real-time action in games like Dragon Age and World of Warcraft provide, their underlying mechanics are not simulatory but still abstracted. Players are still dependent on the random number generators that governed the luck of players in the days of yore. This is not a bad thing, although I'd be interested in seeing what a more simulation-based RPG could yield. On a related note, "Old-school" RPGs have made a minor comeback in the indie/Kickstarter sphere, something I expect to continue as 90s nostalgia progresses and propels the same fervent experimentation and reinvention that 2D platformers have received.

So, to answer your original question, I foresee more developers focusing on more varied and abstracted graphic styles. Once the novelty has worn off, photorealism can lack character and is extremely expensive compared to a simpler, more appealing look. That we are seeing more developers trying to revive and reinvent the RPG indicates that there will be more projects in the future that could include an overworld, although of what sort... who knows?

That's an interesting point about how as graphics get more realistic, that more abstract mechanics become stranger. I'd never thought of it that way but I definitely agree. I'd guess that's why FF13 has a more "active" version of their ATB system with its multiple actions per turn and its flashy animations.

It's also probably a reason that more games are providing explanations for game elements like HUDs and objective markers. It doesn't make as much sense to have floating ammo and health counters if you're a real person.

You can make a convincing argument that the focus on "realistic" graphics is why western attempts to copy JRPG's through the late 90's and early 00's were typically failures.

In particular I'm reminded of EA's mediocre LotR: The Third Age. While most detract its laughable story, a key element of why the game didn't work was the realistic graphics slapped over FFX's combat system. A tad cringeworthy in retrospect.

The Mass Effect series had an overworld, so its not completely dead in mainstream.

And yeah, I rather like them. They do bring the world alive in an interactive way. Jumping from zone to zone kind of sucks, as do artificially tiny worlds(As MMOs generally have).

Now I'm imagining an MMO that has a massive procedural world with isolated 'zones' scattered throughout, but otherwise largely barren. Players can travel between these zones on foot, which would take forever, but they also get some style of airships they can use in an overworld type travel. And, for maximum awesomicity, other players can, if they look up, see these airships flying high overhead, and perhaps sometimes battling.

Technically the same as flying mounts, but I would do the flying on a single 2d plain, like overworlds always are, controlled from a 3rd person view.

I think one of the things a lot of developers are obsessed with now is "if you can see it, you can go to it." It's far more impressive, visually anyway, to be able to see something in the distance and then go to it seamlessly. Rather than the game having to load a new area after you walk over a miniature house. I think it originally had to do with technical limitations that have since been overcome.

I dunno though, I'm sure it could still work well if used properly. I have not played Ni No Kuni but from what you describe, it sounds like it works well for that style of game.

I feel like sometimes developers get caught up creating a world instead of creating a game. Don't get me wrong, having a fully fleshed out world can't really hurt, but at some point you need to consider gameplay.

I may be nostalgic about old RPGs but I really do feel that overworlds add a sense of depth and size to RPGs. The worlds feel bigger when I have to zone out to a map specifically used for getting around rather than walking through a few zones and all of a sudden I'm at the other end of the continent.

I certainly know what you're saying. Some games it can throw you off because the transition is rough, but I remember in FF6 one of the coolest things was seeing the overworld transform between world of Balance and Ruin. Knowing that there were entire cities full of people that I could visit whenever I wanted, that were going to have their lives radically changed by the events.

As opposed to city I visited for 7 minutes at the beginning of the game and never returned to ever again.

Can someone explain what an "overworld" map is? As far as I can tell nearly every modern western RPG has had a world map. Even games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age had maps where you couldn't go to every location.

The difference is that the world map in Mass Effect or Dragon Age only lets you pick a location and travel to it. There may be a scripted encounter on the way but that's it. The OP is, if I understand it correctly, talking about a world map more akin to the one found in Fallout and Fallout 2 in which you can roam around freely and can experience randomly generated encounters.

Not at all like that. The overworld is an abstraction above the towns and cities that players freely navigate. The player enters the overworld immediately upon leaving the a town or dungeon. While they are in the OW, towns, caves and cities show up as icons or simplified models. Walking around the overworked also generally means encountering npcs only in random turn-based encounters. Baldurs Gate might be similar, but even then the player is not able to roam freely, as they must select a region to journey towards.

It seems OP is talking about a very specific style of 'overworld', one that is more exaggerated and abstract than the sandbox levels you provided as examples. Something like this. There's a distinct change in scale when a player is not in a dungeon or a village. Their sprite is roughly the size of the towns they can enter, but it's understood that they are not actually shrinking and growing as they travel; it's merely another way to represent the game world.

I enjoy the Overworld a lot too, I'm a big JRPG fan and for me one of the single most enjoyable things in a JRPG is getting the flying ship and flying around the world. Last game I played with full commitment to this mechanic was Tales of Vesperia, so that's pretty recent. I don't think the mechanic is going to die off, and might even experience an revival, but it is a bit outdated in a sense.

I'd imagine the mechanic was made to provide a seemingly large area to explore and traverse, while keeping the costs and game size at a minimum. It's getting easier and easier to do that in normal view, it's cheaper and size isn't such an issue anymore. I'm expecting different variations of fast travel to become more common, with the world map being an overlay and the game itself taking place in several small dungeons you have to travel through to open up new destinations. Or open worlds, maybe.

My first instinctive thought on this is "games might become claustrophobic", but that's not really true. That only happens when the world is made badly (little variance between areas) or very very linearly. This was my issue with FFXIII the game world was surely HUGE, the total dungeoned area must have been larger than ever before... but it was so linear that it felt very small and narrow. Perhaps FFXIII still suffers from having the world map in recent history. A lot of the instanced dungeons in FF games have been fairly linear and at most you had to take a very long sidepath to get W-Item or whatever. The exploration and much of the "largeness" of the world came from the overworld map (and the story, and variance in areas). In contrast, many games have factions of the dungeoned area of FFXIII and make their world seem enormous, f.ex. Dark Souls.

TL;DR I love the mechanic and wish it came back, but sadly there might be better ways to do the same things these days.

PS. Don't you just love it when you get the flying ship and then you go fly over water and the water makes a V? Oooo-ooo-ooh.

I think that the Overworld map could be seen a lot more in smaller, indie projects. These devs still are very limited by time and money, and the Overworld wold let them make a much larger world much more cheaply. In fact they already have, in games such as "Call of Cthulhu"

Can someone explain what an "overworld" is in this context? I can't seem to wrap my head around it.

I'd love to weigh in on the conversation, but it sounds to me like the overworld has something to do with the ingame map and a miniature of my player character, or the actual game world that is not the dungeons.

I've never seen the first, and I don't recall the second ever going away.

this is probably a little late for you to get into the conversation but I'll give it a shot. picture something like this. there is very little detail on the map other than general features like mountain ranges and roads. you can see a little town in the upper left corner, if you were to drive the character into that little town the game loads an environment more similar to what you might see in the pokemon handhelds or the like.

a lot of old-school jrpgs used this style of 'overworld' to give players the sense that the story was playing out over a huge, epic game world without having to create assets for one. in reality the overworld is probably smaller than most of the detailed environments but the abstraction to a miles-high viewpoint makes it seem big.

I can't access the image because of the damn filter here, but what you're describing sounds like the little map thing in the Super Mario games, am I thinking along the right track?

If that's right, than this idea sounds a little bit obsolete with the capabilities we have now. Between the huge detailed worlds we have now and fairly detailed world maps that we're capable of, I don't understand why it would be in the game aside from nostalgia.

that's pretty much the concept, though those maps were a little bit constricted since you could only move along the lines. the overworlds OP's referencing are generally more open-ended and usually have lots of random encounters going on to keep the gameplay lively.

you're right though, there's not many reasons to use a system like that unless you're trying to make an old school game or allocate most of your resources to smaller, more detailed environments. either way it's not something I think many people will miss.

I played FF7 as the first game that actually got me into video games and I can't recall for sure, but I feel like they had an overworld of sorts, so I see the appeal, but at the same time looking at then and now it really seems like it was neccesity and I'd compare it to using a "dumb" phone and a "smart" phone at this point.

There are advantages to it, but for most people, using a dumb phone or the old overworld system is going to make them feel like they're being deprived of the new hottness they know they could have.

It seems like at this point it would only make sense if it were utilized with throw back art style intentionally or if it were a game where that was accepted practice, like the Mario platformers. Honestly though, if I were to fork out for a Mario in this day and age and I was greeted with an overworld as opposed to an actual lush detailed world a la a more linear Skyrim, I would be disappointed. Just me though. I'm sure this has a niche that's craving it like mad.

I haven't played FF7 but iirc all of the final fantasies before X had overworlds. your comparison is a good one--in this day and age a classic 'overworld' would generally disappoint players used to the massive game worlds in skyrim and dark souls.

the only way I can see viability in it is if the overworld is actually gargantuan, so large that the developers couldn't possibly detail it all. it's hard for me to imagine an rpg game that could be that ambitious and still have enough focus to succeed but who knows, I'm not very creative. we have ample proof that people will accept smaller game environments in exchange for more detail so it's difficult to see something like that ever taking off.

Personally I'd love to see a "modernized" concept of the Overworld make a comeback. There really was something charming about the way you wandered and explored the worldmap looking for things. The challenging part is actually filling it with things to do that keep you engaged rather than entangled with carrot on a stick mechanics.

Modern open-world titles seem like the next step, but certain developers seem to be more obsessed with how many wheels of cheese they can cram in a room rather than how rich and engaging the world they're making is. The scale is meaningless if it fails to engage the player in novel ways (incidentally, I felt New Vegas did a fantastic job of amending, or at least working around some of these genre flaws). Thankfully there are developers out there who remember what's compelling about open world design.

The dream is to have a title that matches or exceeds the scale and reach of a game like Skyrim, while giving you the focus and imagination of a game like FF9. (Incidentally, its interesting how much bethesda titles like Oblivion or Skyrim, and a PSX FF game have in common in terms of maps, dungeons, and travel. Wandering into Kvatch or Burmecia isn't really all that different is it?) When a JRPG goes badly it ends up being stifling and linear. When an open world WRPG goes badly it ends up being boring and unfocused.

I feel like the main (and perhaps only) reason that overworld maps ever existed because there was a fundamental difference in mechanics/perspective between combat and travelling.

I cannot think of an example (so please offer one up if you think of it), but once combat becomes real-time (e.g. Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud, etc.), there is no longer a reason to have a fully open and traversable overworld map.

Secret of Mana on the SNES had an overworld map where your pet dragon could fly you to specific cities and continents, but it is not fully open and traversable.

Wait, isn't that exactly what FFX had after you got the airship? The only difference was that it wasn't free-roam and just had pre-set locations. Unless I'm mistaking what you consider a "world map" here.

Yeah, FFX had kind of a "level select screen" in disguise as an overworld map. Pretty lame excuse for an overworld if you ask me. Also you got it pretty late in the game. In other FF games you constantly travel between locations on the overworld map, which sometimes includes requiring certain vehicles (or chocobos) to go to certain places, or finding your way around or through a mountain chain, entering a cave to find you exit it on the other side of a blockade, hunting for certain mobs on the map, or simply having to figure out by yourself where to go next to continue the story. The overworld map was a challenge in itself, and there was often stuff to do and discover.

In FFX it really was just a "revisit past levels" screen which might as well have been a simple menu. The only purpose it served was to allow you to go back and find items and optional bosses you missed, or to find a place to grind.

To be fair, I'm fairly sure FFX was the first one that actually had detailed paths between areas. The trade-off was linearity but resulted in a better looking game overall. As the first major JRPG on a new console, it might have simply just been a design decision. To its credit, there were plenty of reasons to go back to some areas since there were a lot of sidequests in the game.